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Insights

The climate crisis can cause a severe demographic imbalance in countries that already experience a considerable water stress: uncontrolled internal migrations, less visible than cross-border ones, but with increasingly uncertain consequences. A study by the World Bank draws the attention of the international community and takes a first step towards the creation of a model to follow up a phenomenon that may affect more than 140 million people.

In India, the enormous challenge of achieving the sustainable growth of a country that in a few years will be the most populated in the world, should be based on avoiding the ruin of small farmers, empowering them to fight drought, the degradation of the land, single-crop farming and social imbalance. The construction of small self-managed reservoirs brings life to the most impoverished farmers and is a development model to be followed in semiarid regions.

The oil spills in the Marañón River cause an environmental and human disaster that reveals the defenselessness suffered by many Amazonia inhabitants when faced with the legal maze in the fight for their human rights. The short film Cuninico, when the rain forest turns black, finalist of the We Art Water Film Festival 4, shows the marginalization of the natives whose lives and economy directly depend on the river.

The periodic crises in the African “Hunger Belt” have provided a more accurate and effective vision of the relationship between desertification and human activities. Regardless of the droughts, poor resource exploitation practices have been determinants of land degradation. The African Great Green Wall project gives hope to the Sahel, one of the most vulnerable areas to the current climate crisis.

In Rwanda, one of Africa’s emerging economies, half of the population lacks access to water. In villages like Rugaramura, water supply disruptions last for weeks and its inhabitants have to fetch water outside the village. “Amazi”, one of the finalist short films of the We Art Water Film Festival 4, recreates an attitude that is the basis of the Rwandan people’s recovery: joy, a shared emotion that best integrates a community to face the future with confidence.

In the cities in Nigeria, only one in ten people has a supply of water. For homeless children it is a treasure that is difficult to find. This is the case of Bala, the protagonist of the micro-documentary Pure Water Boy, the winner of the Audience Award of the We Art Water Film Festival 4: he survives by selling water and by drinking the remains of what he sells. But he considers himself fortunate: his colleagues in the north of the country live in worse conditions.

In the outlying slums of the capital of Sierra Leone, the population constantly increases in shacks without water or sanitation. Children bear the brunt: they miss school hours fetching water that often makes them sick. This is the reality of Kadija A. Bangura, shown in the micro-documentary Far Away, one of the finalists of the We Art Water Film Festival 4.

The We Are Water Foundation and Diamond Resorts take a step further towards global awareness of the importance of the good use of water and the respect for the environment. “Let’s Make a Deal” is a pioneering initiative that involves the entire human chain in hotels, guests and professionals, to advance together towards this goal.